In the last fifty years, the practice of nursing has significantly grown and changed. Today nurses are required to think and receive more education and training. The new evolution has developed caregivers’ capability, helping them make complex care decisions that only physicians could make in the past. The nurses have opportunities to acquire higher education, which improves their training level and allows them to be critical thinkers thus, broadening their practice’s scope by enabling them to undertake more responsibilities independently while doing their work in the hospital setting (Kor et al., 2018). The broadening nursing scope has activated education and training change to help prepare nurses to assume more complex duties. Through more education, the nurses have acquired more knowledge and skills on care provision and allowed them to be better critical thinkers. Additionally, nurses have received more treatment to gain treatment procedures’ control and develop a good relationship with patients to better understand their concerns and provide timely and quality care.
Associate and Baccalaureate Education Comparison
Nurses with baccalaureate education can be called professional nurses as they are more trained on relationships and professionalism, while those with associate education are more trained in technical nursing. Associate education trains nurses mainly on clinical skills, while baccalaureate education concentrate on nursing research, clinical training and training, and nursing management.
Both associate and baccalaureate education give nurses the essential skills and knowledge to meet the general standards, acceptable patient care. Baccalaureate nurses concentrate more on research, prevention of disease, advocating for patients, implementing the best nursing practices, community health, data evaluation, and finding better interventions of patient problems in their practice scope (Djukic et al., 2019). The scope of practice for nurses with associate education involves primary nursing care, for instance, symptoms recording, patients’ medical history recording, maintaining medical tools, patient education about various diseases affecting the community, and helping physicians.
BSN and ADN Care Approaches
In circumstances of patient care, such as a client showing symptoms of chronic disease, decision-making and nursing care approaches can differ greatly between BSN and ADN nurses. The BSN is more likely to come up with more helpful decisions in a clinical setting, like an incident of a patient demonstrating chronic signs, because the nurse has more training on critical thinking and making effective decisions of care than the ADN (Jeffreys, 2020). The BSN can make a better patient examination. The BSN-prepared nurse is likely to develop improved relationships with the clients and their families using effective communication skills acquired during the BSN program. The BSN program provides advanced and better communication skills than ADN programs, which helps the BSN-prepared nurse better communicate with clients, build trust, bond with them, their families, and fellow nurses, and enhance relationships with all the care stakeholders (Djukic et al., 2019).
Importance of Evidence‐based Practice
Registered Nurses (RN) can offer care to numerous clients by applying evidence-based interventions grounded on research. In RN-BSN programs, a lot of time is spent by nurses learning and implementing evidence-based practice (EPB). This assists BNS-prepared nurses in identifying different care strategies that can be more appropriate to the patients. Therefore, EPB has become a critical component of quality patient care (Blackman, & Giles, 2017). In nursing, EBP involves integrating clinical knowledge, evidence of research, and patient values. Evidence-based practice is an approach to problem-solving that encourages baccalaureate-prepared nurses to deliver personalized patient care. Through evidence-based practice, the baccalaureate nurses learn various cause actions for delivery of care like developing clinical questions, evidence collection, analysis, application, and evaluating of evidence.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Communication
In both education programs, the baccalaureate and associate have good communication skills, allowing nurses to communicate well with clients and other caregivers in other clinical fields and develop stronger bonds to enhance care delivery. Improved communication skills allow for more interdisciplinary collaboration, especially in today’s modern care environments that are complex, requiring nurses to practice and learn new interventions easily and undertake complicated care practices. Effective communication improves interdisciplinary communication, enhancing patient safety and decreasing the level of medical errors (Wang et al., 2018). Additionally, collaboration can lower burnout levels among nurses, increasing their performance, which eventually translates to improved care delivery and patient outcomes.
Conclusively, the practice of nursing has significantly grown and changed; today, nurses are required to think critically. The new evolution has developed caregivers’ capability, helping them make complex care decisions that only physicians could make in the past. The nurses have opportunities to acquire higher education, which improves their training level and allow them to be a more critical thinker. Associate education trains nurses mainly on clinical skills, while baccalaureate education concentrates on nursing research, clinical training and training, and nursing management. The BSN is more likely to come up with more helpful decisions in a clinical setting, like an incident of a patient demonstrating chronic signs, because the nurse has more training on critical thinking and making effective decisions of care than the AND. Registered Nurses (RN) can offer care to numerous clients by applying evidence-based interventions grounded on research. In both education programs for baccalaureate and associate have good communication skills, allowing nurses to communicate well with clients and other caregivers in other clinical fields and develop stronger bonds to enhance care delivery.
References
Blackman, I. R., & Giles, T. M. (2017). Can nursing students practice what is preached? Factors impacting graduating nurses’ abilities and achievement to apply evidence‐based practices. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 14(2), 108-117.
Djukic, M., Stimpfel, A. W., & Kovner, C. (2019). Bachelor’s degree nurse graduates report better quality and safety educational preparedness than associate degree graduates. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 45(3), 180-186.
Jeffreys, M. R. (2020). ADN-to-BSN articulation, academic progression, and transition: A proactive, holistic approach. Nurse educator, 45(3), 155-159.
Kor, P. P. K., Kwan, R. Y. C., Liu, J. Y. W., & Lai, C. (2018). Knowledge, Practice, and Attitude of Nursing Home Staff Toward the Use of Physical Restraint: Have They Changed Over Time?. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 50(5), 502-512.
Wang, Y. Y., Wan, Q. Q., Lin, F., Zhou, W. J., & Shang, S. M. (2018). Interventions to improve communication between nurses and physicians in the intensive care unit: An integrative literature review. International journal of nursing sciences, 5(1), 81-88.
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